U.S. Secret Service Questioned 220 Employees in Colombia Probe

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Secret Service questioned
220 people over three weeks to determine who was at fault in a
Colombia prostitution scandal that led to nine employees being
found guilty of “serious misconduct,” the agency’s director
said.

Additionally, the Secret Service, after interviewing 28
people, found no evidence that a separate incident had occurred
in El Salvador as alleged in the media, Director Mark Sullivan
said in a prepared statement.

Sullivan is scheduled to answer questions today from the
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
about the episode last month in Cartagena, Colombia, where nine
Secret Service employees allegedly hired prostitutes. The
employees, who have been or are in the process of being removed,
were part of a team preparing security for a visit by President
Barack Obama.

“I can assure this committee that the Secret Service is
committed to investigate any allegation of misconduct where
witnesses are willing to come forward with facts,” Sullivan
said in the statement.

The Secret Service so far has been “completely transparent
and cooperative” in its probe, acting Inspector General Charles
K. Edwards of the Department of Homeland Security, which is
conducting its own investigation, said in a prepared statement.

Not Compromised

Sullivan repeated agency assurances that Obama’s security
wasn’t compromised because of the incident. The Secret Service
formed a working group last month that is reviewing its
standards of conduct, he said.

Sullivan must explain what he is doing to ensure there is
no “code of silence” among agents that keeps questionable
behavior from being reported, Senator Joe Lieberman, a
Connecticut independent who heads the committee, said in a
prepared statement.

“We need to know if there were warning signs that this
kind of behavior was happening in the years prior to Cartagena
that should have moved the Secret Service to act in a way that
would have made it less likely,” Lieberman said.

Separately, at least two U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agents “entertained female foreign national
masseuses” in one of the agent’s Cartagena apartment, said
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the panel,
in a statement yesterday.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating
the DEA agents’ “potential misconduct,” which is unrelated to
the Secret Service incident, said Jay Lerner, a spokesman for
the inspector general, in a statement.